Illustration by Savannah Cooks, Entertainment Editor
Article by Annphia Shelton, Staff Writer
Warning: There are some SPOILERS ahead from the character Moon Knight’s backstory.
On March 30, 2022, Disney+ will be releasing their next installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the show Moon Knight, about the character of the same name who is a well loved comic vigilante that has had many comic runs since the ‘70s.
Moon Knight draws power from an Egyptian moon god. One of the standout traits of Moon Knight’s character is the way it so closely studies trauma. With Jeremy Slater as an executive producer and head screenwriter, and Mohumed Diab directing, there’s been plenty of mixed reactions from fans. But overall, the consensus seems to be curiosity on what Marvel is going to do with this character.
Marc Spector, played by Oscar Issac, developed a dissociative disorder due to previous traumas in his childhood and has two other personalities, Steven Grant and Jake Lockley. Kevin Feige, another executive producer, described the show as brutal. This is the first Marvel project produced by Disney that has a tone this dark, which personally makes me very excited. We’ll likely get some of the dark comic accuracy that a lot of MCU projects lack. To be fair, they try to keep everything within the PG-13 range for younger audiences. It’s more marketable, and has been extremely successful. So seeing them venture into new waters is extremely compelling.
With the information we have about the Disney+ show from the trailers, we’ll be following Steven Grant. Grant currently works as a night guard, when he starts blacking out with nightmares, or memories of a life he doesn’t know. Since he doesn’t know of his dissociative identity disorder, he quickly starts to decline mentally.
In the trailer we can see the constant distress this is causing him. But the deeply unsettling Author Harrow (Ethan Hawke) tells him to Embrace the Chaos within him. Dr. Harrow is a less known villain from Moon Knight’s comics, and the show adaptation reveals differences from the comic character that fans may know. My prediction is that the villain will be a secondary plot line to Grant’s own self discovery involving his trauma and the Egyptian god he has a connection with.
This is definitely an experiment for Disney+, so it will be thrilling to see if the execution Illustration by Savannah Cooks pans out well. Either way, this next installment to Phase 4 will be extremely interesting,